Bhubaneswar: Sudha Singh of India set the stadium on fire by winning a gold medal in the 3000m steeplechase event on the third day of the 22nd Asian Athletics Championships here Saturday.
India also bagged four other medals as Anu Raghavan added a silver in the women’s 400m hurdles, while woman triple jumper NV Sheena, men’s 400m hurdler Jabir MP and the women’s 4x100m relay team grabbed bronze medals.
The lanky Sudha put up a splendid performance and exhibited superb stamina to win the yellow metal with a time of 9:59.47 seconds to steal the show. It was very creditable effort considering the fact that she achieved a sub-10 minutes time.
Sudha, who had also won a silver each in the 2009, 2011 and 2013 editions, was a gold medal contender in the absence of compatriot Lalita Babar, who skipped the event after her recent marriage, and Bahrain’s World and Asian record holder Ruth Jebet.
The 31-year-old Sudha led from the very beginning, and after running together for a while along with the other five competitors, broke away around the halfway mark and left all her rivals high and dry.
North Korea’s 18-year-old Hyo Gyong was a distant second in 10:13.94s while Japan’s Nana Sato took the bronze in 10:18.11s.
Sudha has been a consistent performer in the 3000m steeplechase event, holding the national record in the same event for nearly seven years. She lost it in 2015, but regained it back in May 2016. Her best performance came in the 2016 Asian Games in Guang Zhou, China when she won the gold medal with a time of 9:55.67 seconds.
“I am very happy to win this gold. This is my top level competition after the Rio Olympics. I was down with swine flu after that and couldn’t train for for five-six months. So, this win is special. It is a slow time but the conditions are not that good here,” she said after her win.
“My coach told me not to hang around for long. He told me to break away from the rest and not wait for the final moment. That was what I did,” she added.
However, in men’s 3000m steeplechase, Naveen Kumar, a bronze medallist in 2014 Asian Games, and Durga Das Budha finished a disappointing seventh and eighth in 9:02.95s and 9:04.05s respectively. In men’s 110m hurdles, India’s Siddharth Thingalaya finished fifth in 13.72 seconds.
Rajendra Prasad Mohapatra,OP